The time is right

Living the life of an expat in Hong Kong can bring some very mixed emotions. We didn’t know if we were coming or going, did this feel like home and how long were we staying here? We were living on an island where the architecture marches up the mountain framing a lush green backdrop, the higher you travel up the more expensive it is to live. We settled in Sheung Wan, an area that boarders the sea, with its skinny modular buildings patterned by laundry flapping in the wind, unusual odors of unidentified foods and the constant long screech from the trams brakes. The language barrier can be frustrating on the best of days and indescribable on the worst of days, I started speaking in broken English, just exhausting!

Victoria Harbor, Hong Kong

display of canned fruit

fish drying on the street

One afternoon in late February 2010, Max to my surprise, leaped off his school bus boasting a huge toothless smile. “I had the best day, the best day of my life,” he said. I wanted to burst into tears, everyday since we arrived had been an emotional struggle. I asked him why today was the best day of his life. He said in typical boy style, shrugging his shoulders up towards his ears, as he skipped ten steps ahead calling back to me, “don’t know.”

I instantly felt a massive burden lifted, Max had finally settled in Hong Kong. Now it was time for me-

Only two days after Max’s best day of his life, my Registered Trademark for oogaa Home landed in my email file, no more excuses, it’s time to make oogaa Home a reality and the timing couldn’t have been any better. I decided to start with the oogaa patterns that we had started nine years ago and quickly contacted the original graphic designers.

Once the patterns came back from our talented UK design team; I had found a company that specializes in taking my ideas straight to the textile factories and spent most mornings on alibaba.com’s live chats to factories all over the world. The file on my desktop titled quotes began to fill up. I was inching closer to oogaas’ success.